The new municipal Surrey Police Service will become the force in charge of the city on Nov. 29, a date Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said is part of providing certainty as his government transitions Surrey away from the RCMP over the objections of the mayor and city council.
But Mr. Farnworth’s announcement still leaves unanswered how the two forces will work together during the lengthy time it will take to transition completely. Mr. Farnworth said Tuesday the SPS will not be giving orders to any RCMP officer, but RCMP officers will remain the majority of the force for likely two years or more.
The two police groups will “work together under a collaborative arrangement” that respects the complex federal and provincial legal agreements related to the chain of authority for the RCMP, Mr. Farnworth said.
A letter sent only two weeks ago to Mr. Farnworth from RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme expressed strong concerns about the continued lack of a firm plan to accommodate those agreements.
The Surrey Police Service must work with the RCMP without giving them orders or breaching what Commissioner Duheme called “important legal and operational constraints.”
“A command structure that is accountable to me must be composed of RCMP employees, not a mix of RCMP employees and officers accountable to another organization,” he wrote.
The union representing RCMP officers has said it shares the same concerns.
Mr. Farnworth said Tuesday that all parties have developed “a pathway that deals with that issue.”
“It doesn’t require the RCMP to give up their authority,” he said.
The top RCMP officer in B.C., Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, appeared alongside Mr. Farnworth to confirm the force’s support for the target date and the province’s plan to “respect the authority of the Commissioner,” although he warned that the “devil is in the details.”
The spectre of that “red under blue” scenario – as RCMP officers refer to it – has been a significant hurdle since Surrey first started its transition to a municipal force under then-mayor Doug McCallum in 2019.
It has continued as an unresolved problem in the five years of back and forth about the new service, after Surrey elected a mayor and council in 2022 who voted to reverse Mr. McCallum’s initiative and go back to the RCMP.
Norm Lipinski, chief constable of the Surrey Police Service, said he and his team had been preparing for the official transition for more than three years, a “long road” that had been challenging to everyone. He said the force currently has 428 staff, including 367 sworn officers, and hiring “will ramp up” in light of the transition date announcement.
Mr. Farnworth also said Tuesday the original $150-million the province had promised to help Surrey with extra costs will be spent to support the new force.
Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke had rejected that money, along with an additional $100-million. She has been adamant that the new force will lead to skyrocketing costs for taxpayers.
Surrey council recently approved its 2024 budget, but it did not allocate any money for the new force.
Instead, $186-million was allotted to the RCMP alone out of the $294-million for the entire department, including civilian services. The budget will require a 7-per-cent tax increase and its analysis says police costs will account for more than half of that.
The city budget did include $82-million for severance costs of SPS officers and $8-million for “wind-down cost overruns” in anticipation of getting rid of the SPS.
In a statement, Ms. Locke called the November date for the transition “aspirational” and said “nothing else has changed.”
“Despite the claims of transition progress over the last five years, substantial plans for this transition have never been completed,” the statement said.
“Minister Farnworth’s comments today raise more questions and doubts about the province’s ability to responsibly navigate this matter in the best interests of public safety and the people of Surrey.”
The city has taken the province to court, arguing the province has exceeded its jurisdiction by imposing the municipal force and by not ensuring the city has the resources to assume the responsibilities imposed.
With a report from The Canadian Press
Frances Bula